Spain’s Mortgage Victims Platform (PAH) as a case of a hospitality social movement

Abstract

Abstract In this article I analyse the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) social movement in Spain through the concept of hospitality. In doing so, I develop a double hypothesis concerning the PAH. First, I consider the possibility of the PAH social movement as a public outcry of the ethics and politics of hospitality. Second, I identify a type of disobedient hospitality, practised by the PAH, which defies the legality enforced by dominant discourse. As a hospitality movement, the PAH promotes illegal hospitality based on civil disobedience and exploits the unconditional and conditional tensions within the idea of hospitality. I conclude that the activism of this social movement creates the possibility of a socialized and politicized hospitality that expands beyond its traditional private interpersonal sphere. I claim that in the future these concepts (basically hospitality as a movement) can be explored in other domains and political practices of social movements claiming rights and empowerment such as workers, immigration, gender or LGTB groups.